


There's Something in the Cornfield

by laine_donnelly



Category: Original Work
Genre: Mild Language, midwest gothic, mild horror? idk
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-10-19 12:16:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20657108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laine_donnelly/pseuds/laine_donnelly
Summary: i made a playlist to accompany this lil fic:https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7u88FEWbRetPPxU9YwP351?si=u1aqfSCsRiOve3lTEUuHwAalso i used google translate to write the prayer in Irish so if i got anything wrong lmk :)





	1. Chapter 1

_You can't trust cornfields. Especially the ones that seem to stretch on for miles. There are things that live in them we cannot see. Everyone tells you to avoid them at night, yet there are those foolish enough who don't listen. They don't come back, and the ones that do? Well they're...different. Of course, they're still human, but there's something off about them. They're skittish, and when you ask them "what happened in the cornfield?" they look at you like a deer caught in the headlights. We all hear the stories, we grew up with them; "Andrew Cunningham disappeared in the field," "Molly Franklin's sister went missing and they only found her shoes near the middle," "Sammy Macklin said he saw red eyes floating 5 feet off the ground last week." _

_It's human nature to fear the things in the field. We know better and we do our damnedest to prevent them from hurting us. _ _We never expected them to come into town._

_The younger kids were in school that day, while the teenagers were out, in order to help with that year's harvest. There had been a bad frost that spring, so the town was wary of how the crops would turn out. A few years before, there had been an extreme drought and many died from starvation. A lot of us had buried family members that year, my family included. We had been a typical large farm family; three brothers, ages twenty-seven, twenty-four, and seventeen; myself; two sisters aged ten and eight, my parents, and the cat and dog. Our eight member family ended up dropping to four. We had done our best to move on from the tragedy, as did the rest of the townspeople, but it was always in the back of their minds. The town was small, so losing all those people did a number on the population. Many ended up moving away, further into more populated areas, with better job opportunities._

_I remember the night they came into town vividly. It was late, maybe eleven, eleven-thirty, and the full moon shone brightly in the sky. Everything was bathed in that strange silvery-white glow and the lights of the town shone in the darkness. The chorus of crickets was loud, loud enough that you had to strain to hear the faint sound of the train whistle in the distance. It was autumn; September 23, to be exact, the first day of fall. I remember because it was also my best friend's birthday. The town rested easy that night, the worry of the day long gone. Well, most of the town anyway. I couldn’t sleep, so I snuck out and walked down the main road, towards the place where I could sit and watch the night sky unbothered and unbroken by the skeletal shapes of the dead trees. No one knew about it, it was my own little corner of Midnight. The soft dirt under my feet was packed down from years of traffic, and it easily hid my footprints. As I passed the fields, I uneasily spared them a glance, taking care not to look too long at them as I was afraid I might see something looking back. Quickening my pace, I hurriedly made my way to the dilapidated old Miller barn and climbed the rickety ladder that leaned against the side and made my way to the loft. From there I could look out over the entirety of town and the fields beyond; I loved it. No one could bother me here. After a few hours of silence, I heard rustling outside. Peering out into the darkness from my perch in the loft, I could just make out something moving through the field, heading towards the main road. It was hard to tell what it was exactly, even with the moonlight. I was scared. Shrinking back into the shadows of the loft, I watched as whatever it was made its way to the edge of the field, where it disappeared as the moon was suddenly blanketed by clouds. Too scared to leave the safety of the loft, I stayed there until sunrise, when I knew that whatever it was would have gone back into the field._

_The next morning, the town was abuzz. Up and down Main Street floated whispers of "It came back". Mr. Goldwater's poor cat, Shadow, was found decapitated that morning, and her head and body had been placed on his doorstep in a crude imitation of birth. Some thought it was a sick joke, while others, including myself, figured there was something more sinister. Later that day at school, the incident was all anyone talked about. We were all scared. Scared that the thing or things would come back the next night and harm their pets, their family, even themselves. After the initial incident and subsequent worry about the aftermath, things calmed down. The town went back to normal._

_Then another incident occurred. This time, it was worse. And I watched as it happened._

_I was again in the old Miller barn, but I was there this time for a reason other than insomnia. Stargazing. I had quietly been lugging an old telescope back and forth to the barn before I decided it would be more practical to just leave it there. The clearing where the barn sat offered an unobstructed view of the night sky and it was perfect. That night as I sat observing the constellations, I again saw something moving through the corn. All I was able to tell from using the telescope was that the thing was human-shaped. But it was dark and I was unable to make out any features of some kind. Through the spyglass, I watched in both horror and curiosity as the figure made its way again to the edge of the cornfield near the road. Then, like last time, it looked left then right before moving up the middle of the road towards the center of town. Curiosity got the better of me and I decided to follow it. I climbed down from the loft and stealthily made my way towards the road, hoping whatever it was didn't have any friends waiting in the field to grab me as I walked by._  
_ Luckily, I made it to the road without incident, and caught sight of the thing again. I took my shoes off so that I wouldn't make any noise and alert the thing to my presence. Walking behind it at a safe enough distance, I watched in shock as it made its way to one of the houses. The window on the second floor was open, presumably to let in the fresh air and as I watched, the thing crawled up the side of the side of the house and in through the open window. The way it moved was...strange. Almost animalistic, yet it moved with human-like grace. I hid behind a tree on the lawn and watched with bated breath, waiting to hear a scream, but nothing came. It was perhaps ten minutes later when the thing crawled back out the window. It headed down the street towards the center of town, and I continued to follow it. I winced every few minutes at the feeling of tiny pebbles and sticks under my bare feet, but continued to follow it. I lost it as we neared the center of town, the thing slinking into the shadows the large maples and oaks that lined the street cast on the ground. Whatever it was never re-emerged, so I turned around and went home._

** _Turning my back on it was probably the worst thing I could have done._ **

_When I arrived home that night, I remember laying in my bed facing the window, my hand resting on the knife I kept under my pillow. I wasn’t a believer, I’m still not, but that night I prayed to whoever or whatever was listening that the creature wouldn’t come to me. I woke the next day with a painful cramp in my hand from how tightly I was clutching the knife. Hearing a loud shout come from outside, I dressed quickly and ran outside, nearly falling on my face as I raced down the few front steps towards where the shout had come from at the edge of the field. Upon arriving at the scene, I covered my mouth in shock and in an attempt to keep the bile from rising up in my throat. There, on the ground, in the middle of the small circle of people lay a body. It...I’ll admit it was extremely hard to look at. In fact, I couldn’t even make sense of what it was exactly that I was looking at._  
_ “It’s a doll,” I heard someone say. “A mannequin.”_ _I silently hoped they were right because there was no possible way that what we were looking at was human. It couldn’t be. It was naked, and appeared to be a teenage boy. But everything was...wrong. One of his legs was bent unnaturally and some parts of the skin looked as if it had been flayed off. His right arm was snapped and twisted behind his back. _

_I heard people muttering under their breath that “it was a farming accident” or “it was a bear” . But bears don’t break legs or flay skin. Not like that. And I’ve been around farm equipment all my life, I’ve seen bad farming accidents. But the way the body’s leg was broken looked like someone snapped a twig in half. The longer I looked at the body, however, the more I recognized it. I knew this person, went to school with them. It was Gage Patterson, my best friend. The boy I grew up with, the one who I considered a brother. I knew then that there was no way this was a farming accident. Gage was experienced with the heavy equipment on the farm. I knew he was. My father had trained the kid himself._

_I choked back a scream and backed away from the macabre scene. I only made it a few steps before collapsing to my knees and vomiting into the grass. After vomiting what little I had in my stomach, I wiped my mouth and got up. I was too shaken to go back to the small crowd, so I quickly made my way back towards the house._

_ I was a fool. I knew that the creature had struck again. I knew I never should have turned and went home when I lost the creature. Realization struck me then. The house I had witnessed the creature go into was Gage’s. I just hadn’t recognized it in the dark. My blood ran cold as I realized how close I had come to possibly being killed. If the creature had any inkling that I was in its vicinity, I surely would have been killed as well. I was lucky._

_We buried Gage that night. The whole town came out. The only cemetery in town was full, so we buried him under the weeping willow that stood as a boundary marker between my family’s farm and the Patterson’s. Gage and I had spent many long summer nights under that tree. We camped under it once when we were twelve and caught fireflies and told each other scary stories. It ended up raining but we were tough kids and wanted to “experience the real feel of camping.” We had both come down with a cold afterwards and our mothers scolded us for being so foolish, but we loved it and swore we would do it again. We never did. We both got caught up with school and other personal things, so the idea of “camping under the stars” got pushed to the back of our minds. As the priest said some words over the mound of dirt and crude wooden cross that marked the mound as a grave, I tried to remember the last time I had spoken to my best friend. I couldn’t. I suppose that, in the minds of some, it makes me a bad friend. After the funeral/burial, the townspeople left one by one, until I was the only one left standing there. It was then that I swore to Gage that who or whatever had done this to him, I would find them and kill them._

_There was no doubt about it this time. I was going to confront the thing that killed my best friend, even if I was killed in the process._


	2. Chapter 2

_I_ _went and got a shotgun the next day. Sure, we had one on the farm, but that belonged to my father, and I wasn’t about to anger him by taking it._

_I went back to the Miller barn that night and holed up in my little hideaway in the loft. I wasn’t sure what I was waiting for, but I would know when I saw it. Sure enough, at just a little past midnight, the shadow appeared. The shadowy figure was making its way slowly through the corn again, towards the road. To do so, it would pass right below my hideout. The waning moon gave off just enough light that I could see where it walked, the corn parting. Following it with my gun, I waited until it passed below the window. With shaking fingers, I took aim but it was too quick. As fast as it appeared, it vanished and the next time I saw it, it was already on the road towards town._ _I scrambled down the ladder as fast as I could with the gun strapped to my back and ran after the creature as quietly as possible, trying to avoid being detected. I caught up with it just as turned onto Main, and slowed down, catching my breath. I put some distance between myself and whatever it was so that if it suddenly turned on me, I’d have enough time to defend myself. _

_It was quiet again, the only sounds the faint buzzing of the streetlights, the crickets and cicadas, and my breathing. When it passed under a streetlight, I was able to see some features; part of a nose, an eye half-hidden in shadow, but that was it. I still was unsure what exactly it was. 'A sick, twisted human? ' I laughed quietly to myself at the thought of this thing being human. After seeing Gage’s body, it was impossible for it to be._

_I hung back a little as the thing approached a farmhouse. The outside light flicked on, lighting up the yard and the figure as it stood on the lawn, simply staring at the house. With the house being bathed in the bright light, I was able to make out some of the details of the house. It was painted white with some parts peeling from the harsh winds that swept across the plains during the summer and winter months. Faded green shutters hung on the windows, ivy crawled up one side of the squat chimney, and scattered rose bushes sat on either side of the front steps. _

_I watched in horror as it went round to the side of the left side of the house, possibly looking for a way in. I silently crept around the right side of the house to intercept it, hoping I would catch it off-guard. I did catch it, but I wasn’t able to bring the gun up fast enough and so I watched, frozen, as it opened the window and climbed through. I stood there, either in shock, horror, awe, or some horrid combination of all three as this thing...well, slithered, is the only way I can describe it, into the room. Placing my gun on the ground, I dropped to my knees and crawled towards the window where it had entered and poked my head up to look in, repeating an old prayer I once heard my grandfather say when a swarm of locusts hit the area a few years ago;_

“Saint Michael an Archangel, sinn a chosaint i gcath,  
tá ár gcosaint i gcoinne sciatha gránna agus diabhal; an féidir le Dia é a bhuachan, guímid; agus an ndéanfaidh tú, O Prionsa na hóstaí neamhaí, trí chumhacht Dé, caitheadh isteach in ifreann Satan agus na biotáillí olc go léir. stailceanna tríd an domhan ag iarraidh fothracha a scrios.”

_I always thought it was funny that my grandfather, who was never a devout person, would spout off this prayer like he knew it by heart. Crazy old bastard._ _I tuned back in to the scene in front of me and there it was, leaned over the figure in the bed. Whatever it was doing was making the air around it shimmer a bit, almost like when you can see heat waves coming off the pavement during a hot summer day. It slowly leaned down towards the sleeping figure’s open mouth and...disappeared. __Into the mouth._

_I sat back on my knees and rested my back against the house, trying to figure out what the hell I had just witnessed. Taking a deep breath, I poked my head up to see into the window when I got the scare of my life._

_ Propped up against the pillows against the headboard and looking out the window was...well, me. Yes, I know it sounds strange. And believe me, I thought I was going crazy myself. But no, there, on the other side of the glass window, was me. Same hair, eyes, clothing, even the scar on my bottom lip that I received in a fight with Jimmy Benson was the same. The first thought that ran through my mind was “it’s just your mind playing tricks on you. It’s just a reflection.” _ _And somewhere in the back of my mind I hoped to god that’s just what was happening. But there was no way it could be my reflection. I was kneeling down outside, my knees on cold wet grass and a shotgun slung over my shoulder. _

_There were minute details that I noticed, like the candle burning low in its holder and the glint of a small glass that sat on the bedside table. Both things that I kept next to my bedside and that I absolutely did not have with me at the time. The _doppelgänger_ (that was really the only way I can describe the me on the other side of the window) was a sickly shade of pale and a white cloth rested on the forehead. Small droplets of blood spattered the fron of the white shirt they wore. There were dark circles around the eyes and the cheekbones were prominent. The doppelgänger__ I was looking at was clearly very sick._ _As I watched, inside the room, a door I hadn't noticed opened and two figures walked through; two men. One was dressed casually, holding a felt hat in front of him and worrying the brim and the other wore a suit and carried a briefcase. _

_I could feel my legs falling asleep, so I shifted in place but I must have made some kind of noise because the eyes of the two men were drawn to the window where I was. The man holding the hat, who looked remarkably like my father, shouted and ran out of the room. In fear, I lept back from the window and started running, afraid of what the man would do. I was nearly down the driveway when I heard a bang and felt something hot tear through my shoulder and another hot sharp pain in my side. Fueled by adrenaline and the fear of what might happen if I stopped running, I continued until I made it to the main street. The adrenaline had begun to wear off by then and I hissed as I pressed my hand against my side. It came away bloody. I checked my shoulder, but fortunately the shot had only been a graze. I was beginning to feel woozy at this point, so I sat and leaned against a tree. The pain got sharper as I closed my eyes, if only for a little while. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i made a playlist to accompany this lil fic:
> 
> https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7u88FEWbRetPPxU9YwP351?si=u1aqfSCsRiOve3lTEUuHwA
> 
> also i used google translate to write the prayer in Irish so if i got anything wrong lmk :)

**Author's Note:**

> this may or may not have been inspired by me coming back from chaperoning a field trip in which the bus passed by a local farm with corn fields on both sides of the road and an overactive imagination


End file.
